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Sometimes a book doesn’t click with the Historical Novel Society’s volunteer reviewers. Maybe the period or place didn’t sync, the descriptive blurb wasn’t engaging, or the stars weren’t aligned that day.

Faced with an embarrassed book rocking from cover to cover, avoiding eye contact, trying to hide behind a computer monitor, the review editors will send out a plea, “This novel seems friendly. It wants to please. Will someone give this book a chance?”

I gave Playing Custer by Gerald Duff a chance and didn’t regret it for a moment. Set simultaneously in 1876 and 2001, Playing Custer is a collection of fictional monologues by those who lived and died at the Battle of The Little Bighorn and their twenty-first century reenactors.

If Western history is your thing, if you want to to know what Custer might have been thinking that afternoon in June, or if you’re a monologue junkie as I am, give Playing Custer a chance—and then send me a comment below. I’d love to hear your thoughts.